65th Anniversary of ENIAC

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Shame on you Americans for thinking you invented the electronic computer, the Brits beat you to it by several years with Colossus at Bletchley Park and without it WW2 would not have been won. The reason that no one knew about on the other side of the Pond was because it so top secret, only a few Americans, a hand full of senior Brits and the whole of the Russian secret service, still they were on our side at the time, sort of.
Ned
 
The Colossus was indeed a spectacular achievement and a major force in winning the war in Europe.

However, it was not a Turing-complete machine because it lacked a conditional goto capability. Basically, it was a high-speed comparator where the Boolean comparisons could be programmed.

The first Turing-complete computer was built by a German, Konrad Zuse.

Eniac was the first computer to be expressly built to be Turing-complete.

If you want to highlight the contribution of England to the development of the modern computer, look into the postwar work done at Manchester University.


Like most of the highly complex technical developments of the twentieth century, it's almost impossible to attribute the development of the computer to a single country, much less a single individual.
 

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